


the wish i wish tonight

by FunAndWhimsy



Series: Shidgemas 2018 [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Marriage Proposal, Post-Canon, Spoilers, starlight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 13:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17044577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunAndWhimsy/pseuds/FunAndWhimsy
Summary: Neither Shiro nor Pidge is good at staying in one place for long, and in the years since the war ended it often feels like they spend more time apart than together. But Shiro has something up his sleeve to fix that.





	the wish i wish tonight

 Pidge breathes a long sigh of relief when she finally docks with the Atlas; her ship took a real beating on her way in to help repair Arus' hair-trigger defenses and too long a wormhole would more than likely crush it, so she's had to make a ton of little jumps, constantly recalculating, and it added almost a full quintant to her trip. She's exhausted, enough she sort of wants to just crawl into her cot and take a nap before she goes to find Shiro. He'd probably hate that, though, so she drags herself out of her chair and steps down into the hangar.

"You look like shit," Lance says, but he offers Pidge his arm so she can steady herself on legs that are cramping just enough to be obnoxious.

"Thanks. I didn't know you were on board."

"Yeah, I was telling Shiro I might be ready to spend a little less time on solid ground and one thing led to another and here I am."

"Good," she says. "Space probably missed you."

"I missed it, too. They had some kind of electrical problem or something they're still working through, so Shiro can't get off the bridge for a little bit, and he wanted someone here when you landed."

"So I could have just slept on the ship."

"I think that's why he wanted me here," Lance says, and starts pulling her down the hall to the Admiral's quarters. He gives her a dumb bow and a _m'lady_ when he leaves her at the door, because no matter what he's always Lance, and Pidge is still laughing when she stumbles into bed and goes out like a light.

*

Shiro's already up when Pidge blinks into groggy awareness, wandering around the bedroom half-dressed and humming to himself. She doesn't move right away, because he might stop and she could listen to him forever. Especially if he stays in his tight undershirt and doesn't put his jacket on. He's a jerk, though, so he does keep getting dressed, and Pidge sits up so she doesn't just fall right back asleep. She looks at the clock and frowns; it's early.

"I know," Shiro says, like a mind reader. "Sorry. A bunch of essential systems just turned themselves off yesterday  and Slav thinks whatever fix he came up with might not be enough. I've got the best fucking crew, but if all the bridge computers shut down they get a little anxious."

"Weird," Pidge says, tilts her head up for a kiss when Shiro approaches the bed. He's a little stubbly, apparently in too much of a rush to shave, and she rubs her cheek against his a little because it's not a great look but it sure feels nice. He kisses her again, slower and deeper, and sighs when he pulls away. "Want me to take a look?"

"Yeah, but only after you've rested as much as you need, and had a good meal. I shut off comms between here and engineering because I know Slav's going to try to call you as soon as he knows I'm on the bridge and out of the room."

"I could just go get it out of the way, I can sleep anytime."

"No. You're not fit for duty, and I refuse to let you compromise our systems working on them in less than peak condition," he says, in his stern officer voice. She hates when he orders her around but loves when he turns that voice on her so it's a pretty good compromise. 

"Yes, sir."

He turns pink, which makes the compromise totally worth it, and kisses her one more time, even slower; Pidge doesn't interfere with his work but if he manages to talk himself to sticking around for a quickie she's not going to _stop_ him. Tragically, he's as responsible as ever, and manages to get himself out the door. Pidge sets an alarm so she doesn't sleep the whole day away, and burrows back into the sheets to drift back off to the sleep she needs so badly.

*

"I didn't think I'd see you until later," Hunk says, sitting in the kitchen in Sal's usual place, peeling a massive pile of some root or another for dinner. "Shiro said you flew for two quintants straight?"

"One and a half," Pidge says. "And I can't sleep it off all at once like he can, he always forgets that."

"You know, even if you're really set on never taking a copilot along, you could probably build yourself a robot that could, like, fly with you. I'd totally take some time off for a project like that."

"I like my space."

"You also like being surrounded by parts, a robot buddy's just a big stack of parts."

"Is there food?" Pidge asks. "Other than, y'know, all that."

Hunk rolls his eyes a little but drops the subject and nods towards one of the fridges. There's a plate heaped high with way more food than Pidge is going to eat, and the oven next to the fridge is already preheated and the timer set. Hunk's so good. 

"I can't believe you and Lance are both here," Pidge says. "We're dangerously close to a reunion."

"Keith's here, too."

"Neat," Pidge says. "What are the odds we can get Shiro off duty long enough to have a family dinner?"

"Pretty high, I think. He keeps talking about it, I've got a menu all ready to go."

"Aww," she says, and leans down to take her plate out of the oven, wincing at the heat when she reaches for the toggle to cool the rim and keep the rest of the plate hot. There has to be a better way to do that than a switch that gets just as hot as everything else, probably. "Good, I look forward to it. And don't tell Shiro I'm taking this down to engineering."

"Your secret's safe with me," Hunk says, and Pidge almost drops her plate saluting him on the way out.

*

It's nearly impossible to escape from Slav once he's started showing Pidge all his recent projects to get her opinions or show off how clever he is, but escaping was kind of Pidge's whole thing back in the Voltron days so she manages after only a varga. Not her best, but the lack of sleep is catching up with her and she's ready to go back to bed. So ready she runs right into Keith because she's not paying attention to where she's going.

"Hey," is all he says, and turns on his heel to walk with her.

"Sorry."

"It's fine. I was looking for you anyway."

"If you need anything that involves thinking, it has to wait until after my nap."

"Nope. Just wanted to talk to you."

"About?"

Keith shrugs. "About anything. I haven't seen you in a while."

"Yeah," Pidge says. "I keep getting busy, it's kind of - I don't know. I like not sitting still, I like always having something to do, but it's starting to get a little much. Maybe I'm getting old."

"Or you just need a break."

"Or both."

Keith slings his arm around her shoulder and squeezes her bicep, as close to a hug as he gets when there isn't something intense going on. Pidge leans into it; Keith gets her in a way most people don't and she always forgets how much she misses him until they meet up again. 

"I think it's cool, what you're doing. Like the rest of us needed a place to settle down for a while, and you've just kept right on zipping around defending the universe."

"Tech supporting the universe."

"Pretty much the same thing. I just, y'know, I don't want you to forget you can settle a little bit, if you need to."

"I know."

"Okay," Keith says, squeezes her arm again and lets her go as they approach the hallway to Shiro's quarters. "As long as you know."

Pidge turns to face him; he doesn't _look_ like he's dying of some horrible wasting disease, or whatever. "You okay?"

"Fine," he says. "Maybe I'm just getting old, too. Sappy."

Pidge frowns at him, but doesn't push; when he wants her to know what's up, he'll tell her. So she leans in and kisses his cheek, because she can be unsettlingly sentimental too, and turns down the hall to go take her much-needed nap.

*

Pidge is mostly awake when Shiro sits carefully on the edge of the bed, but she lets him rock her shoulder a little to wake her up because his hand is so big and warm and nice. He's smiling at her when she finally opens her eyes, soft and sweet with his eyes crinkling at the corners. 

"Hey," he says.

"Hey."

"Normally I'd let you sleep, but I want to show you something up on the observation deck."

"Cool space stuff?"

"Cool space stuff," he says, and as warm and cozy as Pidge is in bed she sits right up. If Shiro thinks it's cool it's definitely going to be worth it. The climate control switched to its nighttime temperature while she was sleeping, and it's chilly enough she grabs one of Shiro's cardigans on the way out. The neckline hits somewhere on her stomach and it's billowy enough on her to let plenty of cold air in, but she feels warmer in his clothes than any of her own and she likes the way he still, after so many deca-phoebs, rakes his eyes up and down her like he's deciding where to start ripping his clothes and everything else she's wearing off.

She drifts behind him up to the observation deck, a little groggy, holding on to that soft, fuzzy feeling of being exactly halfway between asleep and awake. He pulls her to the center of the room, and she looks up when he does, at the riot of colors splashed among the stars, asteroids and space debris floating around making patterns, at the little splash of Altean blue Pidge sees in the stars sometimes and won't ever admit to anyone she thinks is Allura keeping an eye on them. It's nothing new, really, but it is really beautiful, and there's something familiar tugging at the back of Pidge's mind. She sighs, and leans into Shiro, and doesn't even tease him for waking her up just to have a romantic night under the stars. 

"Hold on," he says, and then speaks into his gauntlet. "Veronica, execute protocol PRPS-4L, please."

"Is _that_ what you called it, you fucking ner - "

Shiro shuts his comms down before she can finish, but Pidge is already giggling so the damage is done. Maybe he should command a little more respect from his bridge crew but Veronica's Veronica and it's good if all the people in his life know what a dweeb he really is. Good that he's figured out how to be in charge and take all that weight he can never stop himself from taking and still just be Shiro sometimes. 

Two ticks after Shiro cuts off the comms, the Atlas goes dark. There's no light in the observation deck except from the stars outside, there's an eerie stillness that indicates the thrusters have stopped, and as far as Pidge can see through the the dome all the indicator lights and navigational beacons and - everything, just everything - is off. Shiro doesn't seem to think anything's wrong, standing there still and calm and still smiling at her so soft she wants to curl up in it, so she doesn't panic. Still, it's weird.

"Shiro?"

"Shh," he says, and the ground drops out from underneath them.

No. The ship cloaks, so thoroughly that even though they're inside the ship they can't see it beneath them. The floor's disappeared, the decks and decks and decks nowhere to be seen. Pidge has gotten her cloaking tech pretty refined but she's never managed this, isolating parts of a ship that can be cloaked separately. 

Pidge looks down and realizes why this view looked so familiar; they're floating above the remains of Olkarion, almost ten deca-phoebs gone at this point. There's barely anything left, now, between the Weblum (and any other planet-eating beings that might have come through since) and the disruption of any travel through here, flinging bits of debris into the far reaches of space while the gravity shifts around countless ships. It's just beautiful open space, and a little more of that Altean blue splashed across the darkness in the distance, and way off to the side a clump of rocks forming around - something, the gravitational pull of the sun, or neighboring planets, or whatever. A new planet, someday, after they're all long dead. 

"What - "

"I fell in love with you here," Shiro says. "I didn't know it then; I might have run if I did. But I know now."

Pidge takes a couple steps back until she hits his broad chest, until his arms come around her like it's automatic, like he's programmed to wrap her up anytime she gets close enough. 

"I'm taking a deca-phoeb of leave from the Atlas," Shiro says. "I'm going to spend it with you, wherever you want. Keith offered me his house, if we want to go back to Earth for a while, or I've looked at some places on New Olkarion I think you'd like. Or you can keep right on like you have been and I'll just stay right there, next to you like I always want to be. 

"Shiro," Pidge says, quiet because she might break the spell he's weaving with his low voice and his invisible ship and his incredible view. "I - that sounds nice."

One of Shiro's arms disappears from around her waist, and he jostles her a little digging in his pocket. He's holding his hand open when his arm comes around her again, a small box resting in his palm. Oh. _Oh._ Of course.

"Yes," she says, and Shiro laughs.

"You didn't even let me ask."

"You'll get over it," she says, and he laughs while she turns around in his arms, still laughing when he leans down to kiss her. Pidge can't help but laugh, too, so happy and overwhelmed it just bubbles right out of her. It's the worst fucking kiss but the best kiss of her life, except maybe their first, in a random Garrison storage closet with boxes of toilet paper jammed into her back.

"I will," he says, and kisses her one more time before he lets her go to turn his gauntlet back on. "We, uh, have a 'yes', return to normal operations."

There's a lot of extremely loud whooping that makes Shiro blush and Pidge laugh again, and then all of a sudden they're standing on solid, visible ground, the lights are back on, and the thrusters are firing. 

"I think this might be the most unprofessional thing you've ever done," she says.

"Yeah," Shiro says, grins at her. "But it's only Slav and the bridge crew, we needed to test the new cloaking system anyway so for everyone else on duty that's what was happening. _And _I talked to everyone on the bridge crew to make sure I wasn't crossing any boundaries. And then I had Veronica follow up because she's usually the one they go to if they have something they don't want to bring to me. And I dismissed - "__

__"Okay, okay," Pidge says, holds her hands up. "I take it back, you've never done anything unprofessional in your life._ _

__Shiro takes her hands and leans in to kiss her again, nuzzles at her lips a little bit, always the sweetest._ _

__"So, if you're still tired we can go back to bed, but we'll have to clear the paladins out of our dining room first."_ _

__"I can't believe you got everyone here."_ _

__"Lance and Hunk were kind of a coincidence, they both asked before I got the chance to bring it up. I wouldn't have done it without them, of course, but I got to surprise them when they showed up. Coran's here, too, showed up just before I came to get you."_ _

__"And - " Pidge says, but stops, glances up at the swirl of nebulae almost entirely concealing the little bit of bright blue. Things she doesn't say out loud; Shiro wouldn't ever laugh at her, but it's still more comfortable inside._ _

__"Yeah," he says, wraps his arm around her shoulder and starts walking her to the exit. "Her, too."_ _


End file.
